Psychoradiology最新文献

Background: Emotional symptomatology is a hallmark of depression. Antidepressant often fail to effectively target emotional blunting, while acupuncture, by contrast, has emerged as a promising alternative. However, the exact electrophysiologic mechanisms remain unclear. This study aimed to investigate how acupuncture influences emotional reactivity in youth with self-reported depressive symptoms.

Methods: A modified oddball paradigm incorporating a negative emotional valence deviant, combined with event-related potential analysis, was used to measure emotional reactivity before and after intervention. Seventy individuals exhibiting depressive symptoms in the previous 2 weeks, were randomly assigned to either a verum or sham acupuncture group. Electroencephalogram data from 59 participants were analyzed following preprocessing and quality assessment. Occipital P1, N170, frontal N1, N2, and parietal P3 components were extracted. The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) was completed after each oddball session. The Massachusetts General Hospital Acupuncture Sensation Scale (MASS) was completed after each intervention session.

Results: The MASS Index was significantly higher in the verum group. However, significant increases in occipital P1, N170, frontal N1, N2, and parietal P3 amplitudes for high-negative, mild-negative, and neutral pictures were observed after the intervention in both the verum and sham groups, with no significant difference between the groups. Additionally, both groups induced PANAS changes, and positive effect changes were significantly correlated with N170 and P1 (in response to high-negative pictures) changes in the sham group.

Conclusion: Acupuncture altered emotional reactivity in youth with depressive symptoms, highlighting its potential role, albeit possibly non-specific, in depression prevention and treatment.

Introduction: Lithium treatment is considered the first-line option in the pharmacological treatment of bipolar disorder. At the same time, individual responses vary greatly, which complicates achieving rapid stabilization in many subjects with bipolar disorder. The neurobiological mechanism of action of lithium remains largely unknown, hindering the development of clinically applicable predictors of individual treatment responses. The recent introduction of ultra-high-field lithium magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has opened up a promising avenue for better linking brain measures with clinical response to lithium treatment.

Methods and analysis: This is an observational study involving 80 adults with bipolar disorder who begin lithium as part of their regular treatment. Within 4 weeks of reaching stable therapeutic serum lithium concentrations, brain lithium concentrations will be measured by employing a 3D lithium-7 chemical shift imaging (⁷Li CSI) sequence on a 7T MR system. The primary outcome is the clinical response to lithium treatment at 1 year follow-up, assessed using a validated questionnaire. Linear regression analysis will be used to establish correlations between brain lithium concentrations-measured through mean brain, voxel-wise, parcellation, and region-of-interest approaches-and clinical lithium response.

Ethics and dissemination: The BLISS study protocol (NL80214.058.22) has been approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of Leiden, The Hague, and Delft in The Netherlands. Results will be submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals and shared with the key population.Registration Online at clinicaltrials.gov (NCT06134349), 20 November 2023.

From 20 to 22 July 2024, the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM)-endorsed workshop on Magnetic Resonance (MR) for Psychiatry was held in Chengdu City, China. This prestigious event attracted numerous academic elites worldwide. Vincent Dousset is a professor of medicine and radiology at the University of Bordeaux, France, and the chairman of Medical Imaging at the University Hospital of Bordeaux. The hospital is running a completely new project dedicated to applying MRI technology in the field of psychiatry, and Professor Dousset will manage the project. However, this is an entirely new domain for the radiologists and technicians in the hospital. Therefore, Professor Dousset attended the ISMRM-endorsed Workshop on MR for Psychiatry in Chengdu to gain insight into the latest advancements in psychoradiology and hoped to apply valuable experience to their project. Following the conference, the Psychoradiology journal interviewed Professor Dousset. In the interview, Professor Dousset was enthusiastic about merging radiology and psychiatry teams and regarded the term "psychoradiology" as a bridge to unite these fields. Despite the challenges of distinguishing normal from abnormal brains in psychiatric disorders, he was optimistic about the future of psychoradiology and its clinical applications. He recognized the significance and prospects of the term "psychoradiology", and offered valuable suggestions for the development of the Psychoradiology journal.

Background: We previously reported lower baseline arteriolar cerebral blood volumes (CBVa) in almost all gray matter regions in a cohort of individuals with schizophrenia of varying ages and disease duration. The extent to which decreased CBVa is also present in recent-onset schizophrenia, and how this impacts neurovascular coupling, remains to be determined. In this study, we sought to determine the extent of CBVa deficits in recent-onset schizophrenia and the relationship of CBVa to region-specific resting-state neural activity.

Methods: Using 7 T MRI, CBVa was measured in 90 regions using 3D inflow-based vascular-space-occupancy (iVASO) imaging in 16 individuals with recent-onset schizophrenia (disease duration: x̄ = 1.18 ± 1.4 years) and 12 age-matched controls. Resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) was used to determine fractional amplitudes of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF) and intrinsic connectivity (ICC) in spontaneous blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal. The region-specific relationship between CBVa and fALFF was determined as an index of neurovascular coupling.

Results: Compared with healthy participants, CBVa was lower in individuals with schizophrenia in almost all brain regions, with a global effect size of 0.23 and regional effect sizes up to 0.41. Individuals with schizophrenia also exhibited lower fALFF diffusely across cortical and subcortical gray matter regions. Ratios of mean regional CBVa to fALFF and ICC were significantly lower in patients in numerous brain regions.

Conclusion: These findings indicate that early-stage schizophrenia is characterized by widespread microvascular abnormalities and associated resting-state deficits in neural activity, suggesting that abnormalities in neurovascular coupling may contribute to the pathophysiology of schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder characterized by widespread white matter (WM) alterations, manifesting as neurodevelopmental deficits and dysconnectivity abnormalities. Over the past two decades, studies have focused on the clinical high-risk (CHR) stage of psychosis and have yielded fruitful information on WM abnormalities that exist prior to the full onset of psychosis, shedding light on biological mechanisms underlying psychosis development. This review presents a summary of current findings on cross-sectional and longitudinal WM alterations in individuals with CHR and their links to clinical symptoms and neurocognitive dysfunction. Next, we review the utilization of WM characterization in predicting clinical outcomes. Taken together, the literature suggests the clinical significance of WM characteristics and their great potential in predicting the conversion to psychosis, despite some methodological and conceptual challenges that remain to be addressed in future studies. Future CHR research would greatly benefit from utilizing WM to guide pharmacological and non-pharmacological targeted treatments, optimize clinical prediction models, and enable more accurate clinical care.

Background: The hippocampus has been widely reported to be involved in the neuropathology of major depressive disorder (MDD). All the previous researches adopted group-level hippocampus subregions atlas to investigate abnormal functional connectivities in MDD in absence of capturing individual variability. In addition, the molecular basis of functional impairments of hippocampal subregions in MDD remains elusive.

Objective: We aimed to reveal functional disruptions and recovery of individual hippocampal subregions in MDD patients before and after ECT and linked these functional connectivity differences to transcriptomic profiles to reveal molecular mechanism.

Methods: we used group guided individual functional parcellation approach to define individual subregions of hippocampus for each participant. Resting-state functional connectivity (FC) analysis of individual hippocampal subregions was conducted to investigate functional disruptions and recovery in MDD patients before and after ECT. Spatial association between functional connectivity differences and transcriptomic profiles was employed to reveal molecular mechanism.

Results: MDD patients showed increased FCs of the left tail part of hippocampus with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and middle temporal gyrus while decreased FC with primary visual cortex. These abnormal FCs in MDD patients were normalized after ECT. In addition, we found that functional disruptions of the left tail part of hippocampus in MDD were mainly related to synaptic signaling and transmission, ion transport, cell-cell signaling and neurogenesis.

Conclusion: Our findings provide initial evidence for functional connectome disruption of individual hippocampal subregions and their molecular basis in MDD.